Save the Train

One long journey ends and another begins

We travelled from Westbury to Minehead yesterday on the "Minehead Marauder" - a special train donated for the day by First Great Western, staff working unpaid, on behalf of The Railway Children charity. At Minehead, you'll find the end of the South West Costal path and in some ways it feels like we've come a long way here since this site started nearly three years ago. Members have come and gone; a dear friend made through the campaign passed away, another gotr married and another about to do so in coming weeks. And I fell like an old times as one team of tra8in operators has passed on to another, and withing that new team we have changes too. But I feel we're coming to a defining point now, and in the next couple of weeks we'll see the way forward.

At the end of the South West coastal path at Minehead, the West Somerset Coastal path starts. I don't know what our way forward is; I know it's been a long journey, but I suspect we have another long journey to come.

Our Save the Train Support Pledge page has been signed by nearly 400 people (and it's still open for YOU to sign. Interim replies from the Department for Transport, from Wiltshire County Council, and from First Great Western vary from disappointing to encouraging. But what's encouraging in all the responses is that the case for a decent TransWilts service is being looked at rather more seriously now than it even has been, and it becomes increasingly more difficult for parties who have other things they would prefer to look at for their own (perhaps personal) reasons to simply sweep it under the carpet and condem public transport travellers from (example) Westbury to Chippenham to an indirect journey of 60 minutes when it can be done by direct train in under 30.

Road - busy ... railway - no trains, so no users

The A36 is closed for 12 weeks at Limpley Stoke, and the signposted diversion is along the A350 throught the outskirts of Melksham, parallel with the TransWilts Railway line

I had an appointment in Corsham at 9 O'Clock this morning - about 6 miles - but the journey took me half an hour, most of which was spent queuing around Melksham which was solid all the way from the Seminsgton Bypass up to McDonald's

If traffic is diverted on a more permanent basis for any reason, or if traffic grows, this is going to become worse. And with the towns along the way all growing dramatically, surely it will get worse unless there's some form of relief all along. Wait - how about some trains?

Population growth, but congested roads

Major development is taking place near our local station - here's a view from the platform on Monday evening showing Spencer's Gate Development, which wasn't there 2 years ago, and which was advertised as being "close to the station"

There's a coupld of things the sales literature didn't say ... that the land that is reserved for an access road from Spencer's Gate to the station was going to have a dirty great fence acorss it to stop people using it, and that in any case most of the trains were just about to be withdrawn. How do people get around? In their cars:

That's simplifying it rather; teh 234 Frome - Trowbridge - Melksham - Chippenham bus does run through the day (and evening, subsidised by the council), but carries few passengers. I counted 3 on the service at about a quarter to 7 on Monday evening from Chippenham. But there were no less that 18 on the train at (schedule) 19:01 that evening.

So a solution that would - in part - help with those congested roads would be the restoration of trains towards a more apporpriate level. There IS a plan in hand for this, but it's 50/50 for whether it succeeds this year - and it needs your support.

If you think that extra trains from here at 08:24, 09:28, 11:17, 12:28, 14:17, 15:28, 17:08 and 18:21 would be a good idea, please have a look here and sign up if youi're happy with the detail too.

Loss of train - loss of job

"Hi Graham

I used to use this service. Then it was cut so I had to leave my job in Swindon as I couldn't get there by train. I am certainly willing to help on that one it used to be a really busy service - sadly they got basically rid of it."

Launching the pledge page on the "Save the Train" Campaign, I posted a message on the Westbury Town forum. It was late at night ... but within half an hour I had received the message above. "Why are you campaigning for this service" I have been asked. Because we know it has popular support. Because we know it should never have been withdrawn in December 2006. And because it's needed.

Current service leave Swindon at 06:18 and 18:45. Only.
Alternative validated service - 06:18, 09:02, 12:02, 15:02, 17:55 and 18:55

If you support the return of a more appropriate train service on the "TransWilts" line - Swindon to Salisbury via Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Westbury, Dilton Marsh and Warminster - please visit our page at http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/pledge.html

Thank you.

---------------

Westbury to Swindon by direct train - 45 minutes
Westbury to Swindon by train (change at Bath) - circa 70 minutes
Westbury to Swindon by bus (change at Trowbridge) - circa 110 minutes

Terminal 5 - a portent for the Olympics?

I'm hearing on the news that Heathrow's newly opened Terminal 5 was in a state of some chaos on its first day today, with "Hand baggage only" being order of the daym, and what started as a smooth operation in the morning turning into a chaos of queues snaking right out of the checkin area by tea time ...

And, co-incidentally, I attended a meeting last night where we heard from various transport planners associated with getting the transport right for the Olympic games. And I have to say I found the picture they painted inconsistent and worrying. On one hand, the talk of it being "all public transport" with parking only for the most seriously disabled, and on the other hand they talk of buying three thousand cars (that's the London end). On one hand, they talk about building something that will last and on the other hand they end up proudly justifying a bridge because the middle span will be retained to give access to an area of land that will be a prime development site. And on one hand we hear of there being a great train stock shortage - so much so that nothing will be scrapped int he next few years as there's a need to increase capacity, yet on the other hand we hear of the organisers looking to pay the TOCs to retain stock in mothballs for a few years then put it back in to service, together with semi-retired drivers retained as part timres for a while, for the 60 days of the Olympics.

In a way it's early and it would be unfair of me to expect full answers, but I had a question about the travel issues that they couldn't answer. To me, a journey has a start and an end and it seems like the Olymic folks have onky considered one end of the journey - they're looking at getting people in and out or venue, of running public transport to and from there until the middle of the night. But where to? It would be too early to suggest that the tactics of each route should have been planned, but it seemed they didn't know about the strategy. Weymouth man seemed to be looking narrowly at the area below the white Jurassic Cliffs - as if the A35 and rail links will magically feed traffic to his relief road whch "is nothing to do with the Olymoics" but should be ready for them, and London man came up with a rather muted "claerly that won't do" when I suggested that a fleet of trains from London dumping everyone at Bristol Temple Meads (say) wasn't going to get paople back to their individual B&Bs and other sleeping places and for the only time all evening an otherwise eloquent gentleman seemed lost for words.

I worry that it's not been thought through, and that the plan is going off at half cock. I worry when I hear Weymouth man refer me to a sentence on page 52 of a report that he waves at me and I've never seen before - I've painful memories of a time that was done at it turned out to be the death knell of an appropariate train service in Melksham. And I worry that - even at this early stage - we're headed for a Teminal 5 type startup for the Olympic transport. Problem is ... the games run for two weeks.

I do hope we don't bleed the outer ends of people's journeys dry of investment over the next five years to put together a magnificent set of schemes at the centre, only to find that teething troubles for their first two weeks of full use mean they're just about right by the time they're to be finished with, leaving us with some very expensive bridges to nowhere. I hope, but on last night's evidence I fear that it's a vain hope.

Senseless service - could become sensible

"It didn't make any sense." So said a delegate on this week's course that I'm running in Melksham. Looking to travel down from Oxford, where he lives, by train ... that's about 60 miles.

What did the train website tell him? To arrive for the 9 a.m. course start he was to leave Oxford at 00:05, change at Didcot, and again at Swindon (with a long wait) and get to Melksham at 06:43. Too early an arrival? The next train leaves Oxford at 17:51, and again with two changes gets him to Melksham at 19:10

He's right - it doesn't make any sense. But it's not the web site that's wrong - it's correctly describing the current senseless service. Can you believe that's the whole day's service linking the five largest towns in the county!

We do have a prospect - IF we push for it - of an increase to a much more appropriate 6 trains per day. Your support would be much appreciated - please visit our support page to sign up! THANKS

Not a Swiss clock railway this morning

A Typical Morning in my Hotelier's diary here in Melksham, Wiltshire. The end-of-the-week business guests are leaving and making for their next destinations - the intenational set today (for the UK based folks left yesterday, today being Good Friday)

"When's the train ... I'm going to London for the day before flying our tomorrow". And then I face the embarrasment of telling my customers that although we have a station in the town, we have no trains today. "Someone suggested Chippenham to me" says my customer, but I offer to go look it up, and discover that journey times from Chippenham are two and a half hours today, with a bus ride to Reading of a train dogleg via Bath! I end up sending my customer to Westbury - from where a 90 minutes ride (at least that is the schedule!) ride will get her to Paddington before half past nine.

My guest if from Switzerland ... and can't understand why we have a railway line but no trains today, and why there's so much contrary advise and changes.

The heart says "public transport", the head forces car

Isn't it ridiculous? I'm going to an event called "Social Enterprise and the railways" today - and I'm Driving there - to Swindon. How silly can you get - well - I could have left of the direct train at 19:50 last night. I could catch the hourly but to Chippenham then the hourly train on - but that would leave me with a 56 minute wait as the timetables have been designed to fail the through traveller.

Amongst the speakers is Anne Snelgrove - local MP and PPS to the Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly. It will be very interesting to hear what she has to say about the provision of public transport that is capable of meeting the disparate range of travel requirements we have in this area.

Here are some recent links:

New TransWilts Study

Campaign handout - what we have now and what we should have and separate what we have and what we should have sheets.

Travel Watch South West handout fo Save the Train

First Great Western Coffeeshop flyer

Recent Pictures

Meeting Season

This is the meeting season! On Thursday, I was at the West Wilts Rail User Group public meeting in Bradford-on-Avon, on Friday at the Major's reception in Melksham, and yesterday at TravelWatch SouthWest - the organisation runs, twice a year, a series of talks for local campaining bodies and we were addressed by the CEO of First Great Western, the MD of Thamesdown Transport, the Head of regional Transport at Government Office South West, and others. And a good chance to network too, and to talk to these people and other people at the meeting over lunch - it might not be directly relevant to the TransWilts campaign for me to share a joke with the head of the Stagecoach Devon bus company, but it sure helps to know some of the movers and shakers and to be able to approach them if ever I need a question answered! Before you ask - yes, I did have a chance to talk to the new FGW team, and was impressed (thank goodness!)

Behind the scenes, and in front too, some things are changing. It was heartening to hear the CEO of FGW mentioning the Salisbury to Swindon corridor (i.e. the TransWilts) specifically in his speech as one of the things that needs to be resolved. It was heartening to here him talking about carrying on with improvements over and above doing the work necessary to bring the company into compliance with its franchise commitments. And it was heartening to hear him talking about customers and briging disenfranchised passengers back on board.

Andrew - you have indeed made a mark in the South West in your first 100 days, and I applaud that. And I applaud your words. But as yet we have seen nothing but paperwork and meetings, and if anything the TransWilts service has been worse rather than better - a complete lack of even a token service over much of Christmas and some "bustitution" almost every weekend from the start of December. And that carries on up to Easter at least. We look forward to seeing a real improvement in due course on the ground - a regular (if infrequent) service through the day from Salisbury to Swindon, with trains at proper Swindon Commuter times - as per the "option b" we've been touting for several years. There is work still to be done, I know - let's work together and do it for the mutuala benefit of the residents of Wiltshire, travellers to and through the area, and First Great Western.

Milk producers

Why do we drink cow's milk, but not pig's milk?

Cows can produce around 65 pints of milk a day, whereas pigs produce around 17 pints. And pigs milk has to be collected from goodness knows how many teats, whereas cows have just 4 bigguns. Then you have the issue that pigs can't become pregnant while lactating whereas cows can, and that pig milk comes out a lot slower than cow's milk ....

What has this got to do with trains?

The Intercity 125 service from London Paddington to Bristol is a "cash cow" for First Great Western, and services run by 142 / 143 / 150 / 153 / 158 trains are pigs to finance. Not only does a "125" have many more seats, but the train runs faster too. So it takes more money per seat in a certain time, with fewer crew. It keeps taking the money for longer too since journey times tend to be longer, and because of a peverse fare system customers are charged much more per unit of product for the service that's cheaper to provide. Don't shoot the messenger, folks - sorry, that's the gist of the FGW operation and helps to explain why the 125s I was on last week were comfortable, but the "West" trains were overcrowded to the point of discomfort.

But there's rather more to it than that. For sure the "West" service will never produce a revenue stream that makes a significant contribution to the Chancellor directly - but it can sure as heck help the financial and economic case for the area and - at least in the case of the TransWilts history - there's a very high proportion of traffic on the local train that goes on to the main line service.

The majority of our customers now drive to Melksham. From Yeovil, from Warrington, from London, from Cambridge, from South Wales just recently. Customers who - in the past - would have travelled here all the way by train. But the options of "get a taxi from Chippenham", "get a bus from Bath" or "Sleep on the platform at Swindon and get the 06:18" attract only a minority. And the result is that the cutting of that 10 minute link, just a few times a day, has resulted in a huge loss of profitable business!

A return ticket between Melksham and London now costs over 100 pounds. Most customer on the route would travel (our business anyway) on main line 125 trains that have spare capacity anyway (timing details available) so a realistic accountant could put the whole of that 100 pounds down as TransWilts income. Let's see. If that was just 2 round journeys a day, just 5 days a week and 50 weeks a year, we're looking at an income for First of £50,000. And don't I recall that there used to be not 2 but 20 on each train.

Me thinks the cows will yield far more milk if they're given the pigs back to keep them company. And they'll all be much happier too.

An unusual journey for me - some observations

A Single ticket window open, and a long queue; a mature couple making what seemed to be a refund enquiry for a lost ticket. Sign saying "Why queue twice" extolling value of tickets to include London Travel cards, and I wondered "why do have to queue at all - why not open more than one window at this busy time of day?" No, I didn't feel confident in getting the ticket I needed out of the machines! We moved eventually, and the lady in front of me asked for a Southampton ticket; I wondered why she had been particularly anxious, and now realised she was catching the 06:34 from Chippenham ... and the following train on that route isn't until 19:00 - it's a real "Third World" service!

An unusual journey for me this morning - I'm working in a suburb of Cardiff and taking the train. The first train out of Melksham wouldn't get me to my destination station until 6 minutes after I'm due to start talking to a class of 12 (yes, that's right - the first train was too LATE for me this morning!) so my via Chippenham adventure.

£23.50 fare - Saver Return, Melksham (for return there at end of day) to Cathays. I could have save myself about a pound by buying a ticket to Bristol and a Bristol to Cathays ticket, I know ...

The morning gave me a rare chance to look at the 05:29 from Gloucester to Southampton (via Swindon and Melksham) as it came through Chippenham and see how well it's loaded. It came through at about 06:39 - 5 minutes late. Single carriage. 2 passengers on as it pulled into Chippenham and both got off; five joined including a group of 3 clearly on a long distance journey rather than a daily commute (cases, baby), and (I think) the lady I mentioned earlier.

Joined 06:40 to Swansea - 5 late, 20 - 30 passengers per carriage ex Chippenham, of who most joined actually at Chippenham. I noted a one hour gap in following Westbound trains. Train cleaner through collecting rubbish between Chippenham and Bath. Lots of people on the platform at Bath (to join?) and yet we didn't seem to get too much busier.

I think the 06:40 is the only train from Chippenham direct to South Wales, and I was interested to see how many through passengers there were - how many people remained on the train at Bristol Temple Meads. "Some" is a fair answer; not a lot, but enough got on to make the ongoing load reasonably respectable. But it did strike me just how empty and cavernous Temple Meads appeared, and how crowded busy (steamed up!) the 143 that came in from the North headed for Taunton seemed to be. And at around 07:20 we were away and onwards.

"Coaches E through H for Filton Abbey Wood" - ah - we're using SDO, and as there won't have been Grandfather rights there, this must be a new service dating from just last December. It took time - 07:26:45 to 07:29:48 - 183 second stop - and we then gently pulled forward to stop again with the rear of the train in the platform. Final departure - 07:31:30 - 285 seconds. One heck of a slowdown compared to past times, where (on the London suburban runs where I was brought up), just 20 seconds was allowed for a station stop, and 3 minutes was enough time to stop at Pettw Wood and do all the station duties ... AND to do the mile and a half to Chiselhurt and complete station duties there too! I think the double stop was to get a cycle out of the rear 'van' - not sure how often that's done

No-one on the platform at Pilning as we dashed through in the semi-light ...

Severe Check on the approach to Severn Tunnel Junction, which we passed though slowly; cars in the car park indicated that at least some commuters had already left there, but we were clearly "between stopping trains" at 07:45 as the place look desolate.

And we ran into Newport at 07:55. More on than off ... perhaps a third of the seats occupied as we travelled on to Cardiff, and I found my self wondering how busy Bristol commuter trains were getting - it's not as busy in Wales, perhaps ;-). And just a minute to do the station work - what a contrast to Abbey Wood.

Want to comment? You're welcome on the forum

I welcome comments on this blog. There's no way that I want to stop any readers coming back with comments on what I have said - such disussions make a very lively ongoing debate on certain subjects, and other viewpoints add so much to what is sometimes somewhat onesided in what I write.

But, this morning, I have turned your ability to comment here off. That's because there's been a significant growth in "Comment Spam" - people or automata who are posting up messages off topic to advertise their services and bearing no relationship at all to what this site is about. To give you an idea of the scale of this, I'm seeing about 2 dozen comments an hour and that's 24 x 7 and here on the "Save the Train" blog, I see that over 11000 comments have now been submitted to a blog that has some 250 entries of mine in total

Here's a graph of our incoming email traffic

The red section is emails which are rejected by our spam filters, and the blue are emails that are delivered to our email boxes. Each bar is 24 hours, with weekly lines. Horizontal lines every 250 emails.

But - PLEASE - comment via the forums that I use / administer. I am posting this to both my Horse's Mouth blog - Open Source programming, Hotel, Wiltshire, Personal stuff and to my Save the Train blog where I'm making dealing with train services (or lack thereof) from Swindon via Chippenham and Melksham to Trowbridge and Salisbury.

Forums:

Opentalk - Open Source

Save the Train - TransWilts Train Service

First Great Western Coffee Shop - Rest of First Great Western area

I look forward to your - human, real - comments on those places!

Where has our train gone?

I was in Nottingham last week ... and I was impressed by the quality and range of services on offer by rail. I commuted from there to Beeston (up to six services per hour) and took a few pictures to share.

Please excuse the poor quality - I was travelling in the rush hour and at this time of year that mean's it's dark or halflight at best.

The internal picture was the busiest train that I was on; the long train you see pictures (at Beeston) was - I think - two five car units and I was struck by the fact that there didn't seem to be a single passenger in the rear unit, and only a very few in the front.

Perhaps I got a skewed picture - there was nothing scientific about my observations that would withstand any statistical analysis - but it does look rather like there are some trains that are much longer than necessary floating around and a little bit of stock juggling (if everyone was willing) might actually allow a service to be provided where there's not at all, or people are denied boarding, at present.

Comparing a different part of the country

I'm training this week in Beeston, in Nottingham, with a view from my training room over the station. I'm struck by the number of trains that come through, the high proportion that seem to stop, and by how modern they look - they seem to make even our most modern "158" units look slighly vintage! I know I've read that FGW has the older fleet, but this really brings it home.

But some things are the same. One of my delegates commutes from Stoke-on-Trent by train, and was telking about how it works well when there are no delays ... but come delays and connections that miss, he gets stuck at Derby.

It must have been about 20 or 30 years ago that there was a tendency to start stringing semifast and crosscountry services together, end to end, to provide a better passenger experience for the people making longer journeys. I know I travelled on the Crewe to Skegness train once - not all the way, but certainly for a substantial time, and I've been on the Manchester to London Waterloo train and the Brighton to Exeter one too.

There are still some such services around - Norwich to Liverpool is one I can think of, and now there's Brighton to the Worcester area. But some are getting cut in pieces again for operational / franchise / reilability reasons; I'm certainly not happy with what I have heard about Cross Country trains terminating in Birmingham in all directions, and I wonder about hordes of luggage-laden Grannies souting around having arrived from Bournemouth and looking for the onward train to York.

The Crewe to Skegness has gone too - at least at the time of day that my delegate travels. For it used to provide a good service for passengers from Stoke-on-Trent to Beeston. It seems that as well as forward steps which have doubled the number of passengers travelling by train since the low point, we have taken a number of backward steps.

Fare Strike Day

It's the morning of More Train Less Strain's highly publicised train strike, and I note that First Great Western's services are on best behaviour. Of course there are many problmes that are outisde their control and there's an element of luck involved in where floods and fataliites occur but I'll bet they've got every available train out there strengthening services, with extra spare crew to hand in the areas where they expect to see the media. Let's face it ... if I were them, I would do the same thing

Only one set of cancellations this morning ... yes, you guessed it ... the 05:29 from Gloucester to Southampton is not stopping at Chippenham, Melksham or Trowbridge.